Update: Ash starts school in 1st preview of Pokémon Sun and Moon anime

Update: Ash starts school in 1st preview of Pokémon Sun and Moon anime

On September 15th, the October issue of Shogakukan’s Coro Coro Comics magazine revealed that the Pokémon Sun and Moon Nintendo 3DS games are inspiring the next adventure in the Pokémon anime this November. No surprises there, but the series will take a whole new direction in Ash’s training. The announcement reveals that “Ash is going to school!!”, and the anime will follow his student life as he aims to graduate. The same day, a teaser website also opened to reveal the new series’ first promo video and visual. Translated, the visual’s tagline reads “Let’s go! Be your very best! Big adventures!”

The video tells us that Ash will “dive into big adventures in the Alola region,” spending time as a trainer and at school with his friends from the series. He’ll be learning new things in both parts of his life, using Z-Moves in battle just as players will in the upcoming Sun and Moon games. Coro Coro Comics also revealed that the anime will feature new Pokémon and new characters, and that in his adventures Ash will encounter a guardian of the Alola region, a god by the name of Kapu Kokeko.

Twinned with the anime’s initial reveal came the news that The Pokémon Company will soon launch a series of animated shorts called Pokémon Generations. Each three- to five-minute episode will air on the company’s YouTube channel, and retell stories from the first to sixth generations of Pokémon games. There, you’ll also find episode one of Pokémon Origins: Red, the 2013 TV special adapting the first game which starred Takeuchi Junko, voice of Naruto, as Red. The series also featured Eguchi Takuya (My Teen Romantic Comedy SNAFU‘s Hachiman) as Green, Tomokazu Sugita (Gintama‘s Gintoki) as Takeshi/Brock, Katsuji Mori (Speed Racer) as Professor Okido/Oak and Rikiya Koyama (Fate/Zero‘s Kiritsugu Emiya) as Sakaki/Giovanni.

Pokémon Generations will run for 18 episodes, starting with the first two this Friday, September 16th, and The Pokémon Company describe the series as follows:

Pokémon Generations looks back at each generation of the Pokémon video game series, diving into the stories of the games more deeply and getting to know characters and Pokémon better. Visit each region, from Kanto to Kalos, to relive the world of Pokémon like never before!

The company also released a trailer and concept art for the new series:

The Sun and Moon games will be released on November 18th in the US, with Europe close behind on November 23rd. Both will be available worldwide in English, French, Italian, German, Spanish, Korean and, for the first time throughout the generations, both traditional and simplified Chinese. In the meantime, the Pokémon XY & Z anime has been airing in Japan since October 2015, and premiered in the US on Cartoon Network on February 20th.

About us

Littleanimeblog is the brain child of Brits Dominic Cuthbert and Elisabeth O’Neill. Putting their collective heads together results in regular news, the latest releases reviewed, light hearted lists and critical insights exploring the world of anime from a variety of topics including technology, mental health and sexuality.